Knowing, as we do, that Jimmy Carter's Secret Service nickname was "Deacon" is not without elucidative contribution to our understanding of the man, nor are "Lancer" and "Rawhide" utterly incomprehensible as "reductios" for JFK and Reagan.

With this in mind, we may be forgiven, I think, for drawing unflattering inferences vis-a-vis the esteem in which President Trump is presently held in the Holy Land from the recent memo circulating out of Shin Bet HQ.

People familiar with the details of the change who required anonymity before commenting pointed, not surprisingly, to the astonishing defense offered to rebut blame in the recent Blabbergate scandal. viz, "Not his fault, he didn't pay attention to the briefing."

I sorta fear that somewhere in the string theory permanent present, that poor little child is still hanging from a High School wall by his tighty-whiteys...If only deep in the fevered recesses of his traumatized potemkin self.

Confirmed with more detail by Glenn Thrush & Maggie Haberman May 16 @ the Times. Yes, more than a few on his staff realize now that he is quite simply, incompetent. And much more willing to talk about it. This excerpt is the worst part, but it is all through the article:

[....] There is a growing sense

(in the White House)

Mr. Trump seems unwilling or unable to do the things necessary to keep himself out of trouble and that the presidency has done little to tame a shoot-from-the-hip-into-his-own-foot style that characterized his campaign.

Some of Mr. Trump’s senior advisers fear leaving him alone in meetings with foreign leaders out of concern he might speak out of turn. General McMaster, in particular, has tried to insert caveats or gentle corrections into conversations when he believes the president is straying off topic or onto boggy diplomatic ground.

This has, at times, chafed the president, according to two officials with knowledge of the situation. Mr. Trump, who still openly laments having to dismiss Mr. Flynn, has complained that General McMaster talks too much in meetings, and the president has referred to him as “a pain,” according to one of the officials.

In private, three administration officials conceded that they could not publicly articulate their most compelling — and honest — defense of the president for divulging classified intelligence to the Russians: that Mr. Trump, a hasty and indifferent reader of his briefing materials, simply did not possess the interest or the knowledge of the granular details of intelligence gathering to leak specific sources and methods of intelligence gathering that would harm American allies.

Mr. McMaster all but said that publicly from the briefing room lectern.

“The president wasn’t even aware where this information came from,” Mr. McMaster said. “He wasn’t briefed on the source or method of the information either.”

Bit wait, there's more! It may be the straw that breaks the camel's back. He is screaming at them that they are all incompetents (even Jared!)

I wish when the "competence" metric is invoked, it could be clear that there is "competence" as in "Any competent carpenter could frame that window in half an hour" and "competence" as in "OrientedX3" (person, place, and time...)

I'm going to lobby for "delusional" as our settled descriptor. "Psychotic" may be closer to the truth, embracing as it does disruptions of perception, processing, and self control.

No argument from me. Especially as if one goes overboard towards the truth of psychosis (being exacerbated by the situation the normally deluded put himself him, i.e., the presidency), it could get counterproductive. And I do really like Douhat and Brooks whole child thing on that front because then you have the "it's not really his fault, he just needs to be protected from himself."

Comes to mind sometimes old simplistic theories are the best: extreme, extreme example of The Peter Principle. If it were written today, Peter could just say "you know, like Trump."

I have never been sure that Trump would "go quietly" were impeachment ever actually to ripen into removal (a heavy lift).

Roger Stone, even now, has a screed afoot pre=emptively rebutting the alzheimer's 25th amendment move (which means they know damn well that it's true...) and there is Trump's private security (lemme see....might there be a close supporter, maybe the brother of a cabinet secretary, who can muster up 10,000 "security contractors" in a quick hurry...?) (ed note: you can almost hear the song..."Keep on flowing, Mississippi moon won't you keep on shining on meeee")

He cites David Brooks' agreement with him that the president basically thinks and acts like a child. And then argues that a child cannot committ high crimes and misdemeanors. And then argues to his side of the aisle, you don't believe "squishy NYT conservatives" David and me, just look at what his own aides are saying:

[....] Read the things that these people, members of his inner circle, his personally selected appointees, say daily through anonymous quotations to the press. (And I assure you they say worse off the record.) They have no respect for him, indeed they seem to palpate with contempt for him, and to regard their mission as equivalent to being stewards for a syphilitic emperor.

It is not squishy New York Times conservatives who regard the president as a child, an intellectual void, a hopeless case, a threat to national security; it is people who are self-selected loyalists, who supported him in the campaign, who daily go to work for him. And all this, in the fourth month of his administration.

This will not get better. It could easily get worse. And as hard and controversial as a 25th Amendment remedy would be, there are ways in which Trump’s removal today should be less painful for conservatives than abandoning him in the campaign would have been — since Hillary Clinton will not be retroactively elected if Trump is removed, nor will Neil Gorsuch be unseated. Any cost to Republicans will be counted in internal divisions and future primary challenges, not in immediate policy defeats [.....]

I am sort of inclined to agree, after reading a lot of recent stuff, because: it's starting to look like going to be hard to prove criminal intent?

How can it not be over after these leaks from his own people implying he is incompetent, put out so that all the world can read them? They are basically crying out that it happens, and quickly, so enemies don't take advantage.

I learned to my chagrin that there is jurisprudence immunizing a sitting president from indictment, albeit not tested at the Supreme Ct level, so the specific intent element of the crime of obstruction is less relevant.

By custom and common law, the witness intimidation and jury tampering that Trump performs as a mere appetizer to his loathsome Egg McMuffin breakfast all would cheerfully underwrite article one of the bill of particulars re:Impeachment.

The framers cared about a president’s potential abuses over his past crimes and misdemeanors.

Made me think right away about the Clinton impeachment, too. It is precisely what bothered me the most about it, those supposed crimes regarding past supposed sexual harassment and lying about it had nothing to do with Clinton's execution of his job as president.. (Far from it, he performed his job more than ably while spending a lot of time defending himself.) Even if he had been 100% stone cold guilty of the accusations, there was nothing to conflict with the execution of his duties.

I know this about myself: I am a relativist pragmatist and I am truly not comfortable with sticking to rigid moral codes.

My rational mind realizes that trying to exercise the 25th amendment would no doubt end up just as much of a complex mess or more so as the other route. So I am going: okay, do it your way.

But I really do think it is far more practically and pragmatically dangerous to ignore that we have a White House right now that is broadcasting to the world that no one is in control here, this guy is incapable, we are losing it, than that laws may have been broken by leaders. I was more horrified to learn later that at the time of Watergate that Nixon was in a paranoid state and asking Kissinger to pray with him than anything else about Watergate. Is it really worth proving that not even a Pence is above the law by finding him complicit in some minor way if we have a major terrorist attack while the White House is in chaos mode, precisely because they are in chaos mode? Or a general meltdown of the world while we are waiting for "justice"?

i am really uncomfortable with the prosecutorial mindset of pursuing "no man is above the law" when politics is involved, as we all make adjustments to our moral codes all the time in this situation. We all know people get away with breaking law in all kinds of ways all the time. Guess Jean Valjean's story just hit me too hard as a kid and never left. I fear prosecutors as much as I fear most criminals. I do not find their method of pursuing truth and justice and rationality always rational or just. The point to stay on: what will help all of us, what will make things better for a majority? The common good thing.

It is surely beyond ironic to see high level county chairs and such of the Trotskyite Hippie Party falling over themselves to applaud Bobby Threesticks (as he was known when he ran the San Fran US Attorney office.)

ETA except for that nuclear armageddon thing, I have urged a resolution at my local THP chapter proposing that the THP platform will best be advanced by preventing the more efficacious fascist Pence from replacing the increasingly demented buffoon now in office.

[....] Last month, Jared Kushner announced the Administration’s support for the bill in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, writing that the six million Americans in local and federal prisons are included among “the forgotten men and women” that Trump vowed to fight for during his Presidential campaign.. “Get a bill to my desk, and I will sign it,” Trump promised. The House passed the bill this week.

President Trump on Thursday canceled a planned summit next month with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, citing “tremendous anger and open hostility” from the rogue nation in a letter explaining his abrupt decision.

“I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting,” Trump said to Kim in a letter released by the White House on Thursday morning.

The summit had been planned for June 12 in Singapore.

In his letter, Trump held open the possibility that the two leaders could meet at a later date to discuss denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, which Trump has been pushing.

"President Trump’s unprecedented meeting on Monday with the FBI director and deputy attorney general regarding a case in which he is directly involved may turn out to be the defining moment of his presidency and for his party. Bob Bauer at the Lawfare blog writes:

North Korea is threatening to reconsider Kim Jong Un’s participation in a summit with President Trump next month, saying it is up to the United States to decide whether it wants to “meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown.”

Stacey Abrams just one the Democratic Gubernatorial race in Georgia by roughly 3:1. She could become the first black and first female Governor of Georgia. It looks like the Republican candidate will be chosen after a runoff election since no one reached 50% of the vote.

Evans argued that Democrats could win by appealing to moderate Republicans. Abrams argued that the party needs to focus on disaffected Democrats. Abrams won. Abrams even won Democrats in northern Georgia with small minority populations.

Kendrick Lamar brought on a white fan onstage to rap along with his song “m.A.A.D. City”. When the fan rapped the song as written, repeating the N-word three times, Lamar halted the performance. He told the fan that she could not use the word. She apologized. He gave her a second chance. She almost rapped the word again, the crowd was not having it. Lamar ushered the fan off stage and continued the performance.

The audience responded negatively to the white fan using the words on stage. She lost the crowd with the first use of the words. Some did point out that she was just rapping the words as written.